


metamerism

by courante



Series: swans come home to roost [1]
Category: Twosetviolin, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Immortality, Light Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29820414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courante/pseuds/courante
Summary: They meet at a party far away from home.“Write about me then,” Brett said, in the dark. He was looking up at Eddy and he wasn’t drunk, somehow. His eyes were wanting and familiar and Eddy wanted to reach into them and see what he would find. “I’ll play for you.”
Relationships: Eddy Chen/Brett Yang
Series: swans come home to roost [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2192133
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	metamerism

**Author's Note:**

> hbd brett! this is a prequel to another fic i'm writing for eddy's birthday, so any vagueness or plot ambiguities will hopefully be solved in that one. this one's mostly just Vibing To An Idea. as one does.
> 
> shoutout to cape no. 7, whose ending vaguely inspired this.
> 
> cw: it being the 1920s, mentions of depersonalization, mild sexual content

_When the fire to ice will run  
_ _And when the tide no longer turns  
_ _And when the rocks melt with the sun  
_ _My love for you will have just begun_

“One I Love”, (ver. Meav)

  
  
  


_There exists somewhere a soul not bound by time._

He puts down his pen and considers his surroundings: the open window beneath which wildflowers bloom in spring, the old dark stains on the table where he’d accidentally spilled ink before, the corner of the parchment beneath his hands that seemed a little worn, a little tired.

A quiet melody drifts towards him from the window. Eddy stands up and goes out the door.

＊

It was a party out in the boondocks where he’d met Brett Yang for the first time. Eddy had just barely been in this country for three weeks and he already loathed it: the mosquitoes were the size of cattle and the streets were too narrow and it was too hot, a wet stifling kind of heat that reminded him too much of home—but he wasn’t home. He was in Baltimore. 

Eddy was there for family business and Brett was there because he just was. 

“Fancy seeing someone from the old country here,” he’d said, grinning as he held up a glass of wine at Eddy. It was 1927 and everything was going to shit back home. Belle was in London and not returning anytime soon; that was _all_ Eddy wanted to do, but he was in America being stared at and Brett was doing most of the staring, instead of the other guests who just pretended he didn’t exist. The other man had led him to a balcony adjoining the ballroom at the end of the night and asked him more questions.

“I… I write,” Eddy said finally, after stammering out the previous responses (family in the pharmaceutical business, unmarried, wasn’t interested in talking about the impending war.) “Just a hobby. I used to play violin too, but…”

“Write about me then,” Brett said, in the dark. He was looking up at Eddy and he wasn’t drunk, somehow. His eyes were wanting and familiar and Eddy wanted to reach into them and see what he would find. “I’ll play for you.”

Eddy didn't consider himself an extraordinary writer. His had too many thoughts crammed in his mind at all times and his fingers could only move so fast and he spent so much _time_ considering every word, frustrating the living hell out of his editor friends back home, but he kept at it anyway. It wasn’t like he was writing for them.

Brett had an apartment in the city and a place out in the countryside away from the swamps and heat. He spent most of his time in New York when he wasn't here and Eddy didn't dare wonder how he had so much money or connections or whatever it was, at first. He would go over to Brett's place in the city and listen to him play Bach and Tchaikovsky so beautifully and sometimes Eddy would argue for the merits of the jazz clubs and new salons downtown, when he wanted a change of pace. Then he would try to write.

It wasn't like Brett actually wanted a biography. He just wanted someone talking to him, Eddy found, when he wasn't busy trying to talk to other people. This was someone who seemed to have little contact with his family and kept his heart behind a high wall. It was fascinating, and it scared him, and it made him want.

“You barely tell me anything about yourself,” Eddy said one day. He had just finished yammering on about lithium and quinine and import costs and how, maybe regrettably, problems with customs were keeping him here longer than he wanted to be. During the same period of time Brett had spoken perhaps five words. “How am I supposed to write anything like this?”

Brett was sitting in a chair looking at him thoughtfully as the old Hammond radio droned on behind them. The drawing room was not very big, but even if it were Eddy thought he might be able to hear his own heartbeat dancing erratically anyway.

“Are people less superstitious now?” he asked suddenly, a strange question. And then quietly, “I thought this would be easier by now, but I guess not.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eddy replied, for a split second worried that he may have to run. Then Brett reached over and touched his hand for the first time and he realized: something was wrong, and then it was right. It was the only feeling he had been missing.

Eddy didn’t believe in ghosts. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, or touch, or feel, because he was afraid even when he knew those things existed alongside him. If he didn’t look at them, if he didn’t have to think about their existences, maybe they would leave him alone.

“That was how you’d find out every time.”

He had written to Belle that he was fine: he had accommodations in the city despite very little money, he’d found a patron to support him while business was difficult, he’d found…

Eddy thought about Wilde and his portrait and then pushed that thought away from his head. There were no paintings in this house. “Prove it to me.”

There was a fireplace in the room, its contents burning low. Brett walked over to stand next to it, and knelt, and— 

“No!”

“It’s fine,” Brett said. He examined his hand and Eddy looked at it too, apprehensive, and it was whole and unburnt. Brett looked up, as if daring him to say more, but his tone was amused. “Do you want to try stabbing me? Will that make things easier to explain?”

 _Maybe it just made people reckless, immortality._

“How did I die, the last time?”

He had asked the bad question. Brett stared out the window and said nothing for a long time. “Isn’t it enough to know how you lived?”

Eddy used to write stories about things around him: about medicine, about music, about watching the ships come into harbor with the southern winds. Today he wrote about omens: about Herculaneum, about the burning bush, about _The Firebird_. About eternal flames that sprout beneath the ground and burn constantly above water and earth. 

There was an old story he wanted to touch up on, about the phoenix, but he wanted to know more.

“How do you know where to find me?” He asked instead. It was a bright day outside and he could smell the hydrangeas and damp earth after the early morning rain. Maybe it was an animal thing, how birds always knew the way south and how dogs could always sniff their way home. He had no name for that, aside from the deja vu of meeting a stranger he’d known all his life.

“I don’t,” Brett admitted. _Maybe it is you who continues to find me, after all_. “I just… I don’t know. I just wander until it happens again. Until I meet you.”

Eddy wanted to know more. Whether he styled his hair the same, whether he kept his name, whether they ended up kissing in a strange land, back then, however many times. Whether every time they parted was because he was a coward or because he died, again and again and again. He asked none of those questions. He didn’t want to see that look come over Brett’s face again, dark ripples across a calm surface.

“I’m trying to find a copy of a manuscript,” Brett told him eventually. “I lost mine in a house fire a few years ago.”

“You’re going to tell me why I wasn’t more careful,” he continued, before the exact words could leave Eddy’s mouth. The wry smile hanging on his lips was almost inviting.

“Yeah. I guess I was.” And then, “Was it something I did?”

The terrace they stood on faced a maroon sunset. Eddy thought about asking, thought about how maybe if he tried really hard or went to that couple in the alleyway downtown that he might remember what he’d written thirty forty fifty years ago, and then he shook those thoughts away because that was not what Brett wanted. Was it? Wasn’t it? 

He wasn’t the same Eddy as the one Brett had met in Moscow, in Soochow, in Batavia. Not really. But.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Brett replied, shrugging. Eddy reached out and touched his hand, lacing their fingers together. His smile was beautiful in the last rays of light. “Carpe diem and all that.”

In the grand scheme of things, maybe it really doesn’t matter which one of them was cursed, with knowledge or otherwise.

Night was short during this time of the year. They were staying in the countryside then, the last week of summer. There would be a train ticket waiting for Eddy by the end of the month, taking him to the ocean liners waiting in the Hudson, across the Atlantic, to Plymouth and finally his sister. Belle had written to him a week prior: _Do you want to stay? Please, let me know._

(He wrote this by the lamplight: _There were no paintings or photographs in the house because he did not want to look at the past. It was for the same reason there were few books, and even then only impersonal reprints. Everything was neat and tidy and easy to move away from, if he stayed too long and wariness started to settle into the neighbors’ heads. Everything, but what he was looking for._ )

There was another party that night. They played the first movement of that Dvořák quartet together, with a borrowed violin and two acquaintances, to a mildly appreciative audience; it was Eddy’s choice, even if he thought he had made an embarrassment of himself during the impromptu performance. Brett played beautifully, as usual, and he watched them clap for him if for nobody else.

(He continued: _Perhaps one day the world would not be suspicious any longer, and he would be able to stand on a stage again, like that ephemeral moment in St. Petersburg. Now, though, he played for one person only._ )

When the guests finally dispersed and all the instruments and wine-glasses were put away Eddy grabbed him by the hand and led him up the stairs; Brett did not resist as he was pushed into the bed and kissed so deeply Eddy could barely hear him keening in the heat of the moment. It was the last days of summer and the fire was yet to extinguish; he wanted the burn, the relentless heat on his back, and he wanted to know. He wanted to know what it felt like to run his hands through every crevice of Brett’s body, if every time was different, if it had even happened at all before.

 _I wish you would tell me_ , he whispered in the dark, _if what I feel is what you feel._

_I want to be what you were looking for all along, I want, I want…_

“Come with me,” he said impulsively. They stood on a rooftop near the harbor; the ship was in sight from their vantage point, and Eddy was in his Sunday best. “You’ve been to London before. You can take me around.”

He already knew the answer before Brett spoke or even raised a hand to put on his shoulder. There was a real fear there, Eddy realized. And he thought he understood. _Are you scared you will ruin me?_

“Will I see you again?” _In this life?_

“Maybe.”

Brett kissed him on that rooftop that day, above the burning bricks, and he tasted like the sun. The ship’s whistle was louder than anything Eddy had heard before, and when he finally boarded he realized he’d left the last page of his manuscript on the desk, by the window. He looked up past the guardrails and saw what he wanted on the shore, amongst the crowd of well-wishers and crying relatives.

Brett was waving at him as the ship moved away from the dock, slowly, yawning as its turrets cast smoke into the winds. He did not stop waving, even as Eddy felt his face grow wet from the steam, or something else.

Eddy did not look away, not until they were so far away the harbor was stretched thin on the horizon, a line of ink that slowly, slowly dissipated back into the sea.

＊

_“I won’t be afraid of time,” he said. “Not if you’re with me.”_

Eddy picks up his violin case from the room where he slept, down the left of the hall. He walks past the room with the medicine cabinets, past the room where Belle often plays piano to entertain their few guests. Past the living room and the kitchen where his skin still sizzles from burning oil when he tries to cook. Out the door of their rented cottage and down the grey stepping-stones that leads to the garden out back. 

He walks faster and faster, until the flowers all come into view. Behind the rosebushes drifts the opening notes of Bach’s Sonata No. 2, at least, until his footfalls seem to stay the music temporarily.

“Sorry I’m late,” he tells the roses, breathless, smiling. “Just finished writing. May I join?”

**Author's Note:**

> maybe if you add all the sentences in italics together there will be a tl;dr, idk


End file.
